All I have to say is that companies should be driven by their mission statement. Here is RIMs

Research In Motion (RIM) is a leading designer, manufacturer and marketer of innovative wireless solutions for the worldwide mobile communications market.

Through the development of integrated hardware, software and services that support multiple wireless network standards, RIM provides platforms and solutions for seamless access to time-sensitive information including email, phone, text messaging (SMS and MMS), Internet and intranet-based applications.

RIM technology also enables a broad array of third party developers and manufacturers to enhance their products and services with wireless connectivity to data.

The par that is killing RIM is the third party developers issue. Once Android hit all bets were off. Even apple and the iphone would be in trouble if it wasn't for their advertising domination IMHO.

But other than that they hit their mission pretty right on, might be time for a new statement if the old one isn't getting it done.

IMHO, RIM is being eaten alive in the US market by the big players, iPhone and Android, but it feels like the latter two are mainly focusing on the US. Internationally, and specifically in developing countries, I think BlackBerry has done a good job at beating their competitors to market, and that is exactly why the issues faced with the Indian, Emirati and Saudi governments are pretty big deals. It does not make sense for BB to stick to their "closed" model when they risk losing their biggest and growing international share, and in consequence risk losing it all. The constant release of new, albeit minorly upgraded, models work well in growing markets such as India and the likes; you hardly have yearly contracts in those spaces, so people keep upgrading phones as new models are made available. Besides, those markets need to go through the physical keyboard stage before jumping to touch-screen technology, something that RIM is cognizant about and servicing well.

In contrast, users in the US do not upgrade phones as often, partly because they are bound to two/three year contracts that make them eligible for a newer model, for a cheap price, upon contract expiration. US users expect to get more for their money, and in the Smartphone business, this translates into continuously improved software for existing devices. RIM is doing a very poor job at that: (1) premature release of device/software, (2) poor hardware compared to competitors, (3) lack of support for existing models, (4) poor promotion of 3rd party application support, etc. Notice the rating for the applications developed by Research in Motion: they all rate 3 of 5 stars or lower. All in all from a technical and innovative standpoint, RIM is now lagging behind and settling for playing catch-up. Not good.

I live in the US and own a Storm 1, and found no reason to upgrade to Storm 2 as the two looked awfully similar. OS 5 did a decent job at making both more usable; however the Storm series still lagged responsiveness and speed, especially with internet browsing. After the Torch announcement, I thought an OS 6 release for the Storm series would naturally follow; that did not happen, nor were there any announcements that it would happen at all. That got me very disappointed. Now that my 2-year Verizon contract is coming to an end, with plenty of highly rated Android phones hitting the market, and with speculations that the iPhone might be coming to Verizon (probably far-fetched), I think I'll hold off a bit before deciding whether I will remain "forever BlackBerry".

As of today 10:49 PST RIMM is at 44.47 up 1.6 and Apple is at 250 up 7.4 on the market. Given the new product announcements by Apple and nothing as of yet from RIMM it may be a bumpy ride for us BB users and BBOS supporters. Sure would like to see or hear something from RIMM ASAP. They are loosing the marketing battle and first to marketplace with items and apps at this point.

What i really don't understand.
There is a lot of talk about the dissapointing sales for the new torch in america (only about 150K+ devices sold), while here in Europe (i am in the Netherlands) the blackberry sales are skyhigh and the new devices with OS 6 are much anticipated.
Why is RIM not hurrying up with getting those devices over on this side of the ocean?
Here in The Netherlands we have the same GSM and 3G networks, so we do not need the CDMA devices.
So, are there any other reasons known, why RIM has not come up with a time-table in which there are planning to launch the new 9800 Torch?